


picture perfect

by crocustongues



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Yachi has a dog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 22:23:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17886227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crocustongues/pseuds/crocustongues
Summary: in which a picture tells a thousand words and Tadashi doesn't need any to know what Kei's saying.





	picture perfect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lavendori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavendori/gifts).



> hello Justine! sorry for the long, long, long delay in gifting but i won't bore u with excuses. i hope u enjoy this fic (it's my first time writing tkym!) (๑˘︶˘๑) happy (extremely belated) valentine's day! i hope u felt loved & continue onwards with that feeling! (❁´◡`❁)
> 
> in other news, it's baby's first fic of the year! let's hope the trend continues with more fic in the foreseeable future! thank u & pls strap in i hope u have heeded the fluff warning.

Tadashi folds first. It’s been hard day, with nothing but endless mountains of work, and they’ve been slaving away at it for who knows how long now, slowly working between the valleys of laundry and sky-high tips of putting it away.

Most of their furniture is already in boxes, waiting for Tadashi and Kei to come by and piece them back together in a new home.

The Move (capitalisation needed) had been a big decision for both of them. They’d thought about moving back home to the countryside almost since the day they’d moved out into the dorms of a shiny new college campus, just down the hallway from each other, as opposed to down the street.

Four years go by in what seems like a fantastic and nebulous blur of stress, and colour, and monumental growth. And naturally, is followed by a rising tsunami of anxiety of what comes next. For Tadashi, things have always seemed like he was rowing a slowly leaking boat, the floor patched up by his friends’ helping hands, nevertheless rowing forward, and him at the helm, looking back at the swirling waves of nostalgia and the quintessential realisation that whatever he is, is his own doing.

And Kei is eternally proud of him.

Kei looks up at him, and it dawns on Tadashi, mid-stretch, there is nothing but bread at home. In their little corner of the world, all that exists right now are dust motes, boxes upon boxes, and the McDonald’s a few minutes away.

Kei assures him he can continue while Tadashi orders in, their usual - floppy fries, two burgers, strawberry milkshake - rolling off his tongue without much thought and just as he hangs up, Kei finds an old photo album he recognises has his brother’s incriminating marks all over it - from the ‘ _To Kei, with all the love in the world_ ’ to the coffee spill in the corner on the very first page that his mother had tried to turn into a squiggly caffeinated dinosaur.

Akiteru, unlike Kei, had a deep and short-lived passion for the things he loved. Kei can’t remember the last time he’d seen his brother use a camera, and the inevitable bittersweet of a past nostalgia takes him over. Tadashi looks over his shoulder, and finds that the first page is a picture of a baby Kei, front tooth missing and smiling at the camera like Tadashi’s only seen in the ribbons of moonlight, terribly late on a work night.

The album covers the years of Kei’s life that coincide with Akiteru’s photography phase, starting around Kei’s fourth birthday. Tadashi has to practice a lifetime of self-restraint and allows himself a soft, indulgent smile at a baby Kei smiling at the strawberry his mother is holding up.

The next few pages cover family holidays, some pages stuck together at the seams with aged gum that Tadashi carefully separates and he gasps softly at the pictures that stare back at him. 

One is of a family of three smiley familiar faces at the beach, and Tadashi marvels at how Kei’s mom hasn’t aged a day since this picture. Akiteru smiles at the camera, presumably at something their father has said, something hilarious considering the way Kei smiles from by his brother’s side, a fistful of sand inches from his mouth. Tadashi can practically hear what this picture sounds like - waves cresting and crashing just outside the frame, Kei’s mom noticing what Kei’s about to do and yelling in her most Mom Voice at Kei to _stop what he’s doing immediately_ , Akiteru and their father snickering goodnaturedly at their favourite person in the world.

It makes Tadashi feel nostalgic, and right there with them, hardened memory like the seashell that sits on top of old biochemistry textbooks they use as decor for the coffee table.

The picture next to that is a collage of sorts, no doubt an attempted collaboration of efforts between father and son. While Akiteru had an eye for certain colours, his father did not, and the result was a nexus of three distinct moods on one page - a picture of the young Tsukishima family, sans Kei (a sudden reminder to Tadashi and Kei that despite being twenty-two, Kei was still the baby of the family, and therefore by virtue of being his best and forever friend, so was Tadashi), outside their current home, the only one Kei and Tadashi have ever known, the familiar, and then shinier, silver plaque reading 月島. 

(The very same one outside which Tadashi had whispered his first _I love you_ to Kei. 

The very same one in front of which Kei had had his first kiss with Tadashi.)

The picture right below that is another holiday, with a considerably more grown up Kei, his lips curved down in a now near constant frown. They’re wearing matching hats and matching touristy t-shirts of the ugliest kind, and Tadashi misses his intensely green _I Heart Jamaica_ t-shirt he’d wear to bed every night in seventh grade. He’d nearly forgotten how much Kei’s mom adored tacky souvenirs. Maybe he’d take a fridge magnet back with him to add to the Tsukishima Fridge Magnet Collection. 

He voices that thought aloud, and Kei tells him he couldn’t care less about fridge magnets, and Tadashi knows that’s a barefaced lie because when they do stop to shop for one, they will disagree over designs and Kei will take _feng shui_ very, _very_ seriously.

The whole page is brought together by a wreath of sun and moon stickers that Akiteru had probably stolen from under Kei’s bed when he wasn’t looking.

Kei wrinkles his nose at that, recognising his long-lost favourite stickers. Faint and out of focus, the doorbell rings with the promise of food, and Tadashi’s stomach lets out a growl. They leave the photo album out on the one table that hasn’t been dismantled, and lay their food out on napkins on the floor. Over pink milkshake moustaches, Tadashi shows Kei pictures of Yachi’s dog, Kiko, who’s just slightly smaller than Yachi herself, an energetic ball of golden fur that sheds _everywhere_ , as one message complained.

There’s another picture of Hinata and Kiko, from when Hinata had visited a few weeks ago, and Yachi had updated them one Friday evening that this is the most tired she’d ever felt, and to save their best-friendship Tadashi and Kei had better come babysit the two most spirited sunbeams currently asleep on her living room floor. This was accompanied by a picture, naturally, and Kei had to take a good minute to compose himself.

“That’s not _funny_ ,” Tadashi reprimands, trying and failing to keep his giggles in check.

He bursts out laughing when Kei has finally gathered himself enough to snort impressively at him.

They clear away their napkins and food wrappers, and Kei turns the light out. Tadashi grabs the album before opening the last few pages, oddly drawn to album like Kei’s life before he’d met Tadashi was a house on a faraway hill shrouded in mist, and the album is map written in hieroglyphs, a master-key, a bright amber lantern.

The photos take on a sepia tint, marking the beginning of Akiteru’s Instagram inspired layouts, ranging from artfully arranged pictures of strawberry cheesecake to a single volleyball in their backyard. Then - 

There are pictures of _them_. There’s a whole section of pictures of the two of them together, starting with one from Tadashi’s twelfth birthday party, in which he’s holding a handmade card that spells out the word _friend_ in volleyball stickers. Tadashi almost cries at the echo of a seemingly _ancient_ memory, surfacing like bubbles in a freshly opened can of soda.

He turns the pages over, catching glimpses of his past self, enigmatic and familiar all at once.

The last page of the album holds Tadashi’s favourite memory of their childhood. In their last year of high school, on the cusp of being flung head-first into the great, big unknown, Tadashi had the honour of serving as the captain of the Karasuno Men’s Volleyball Club, and in their third year of high school, they’d won the nationals. The last picture captures the four of them, and tells a long story, packed with hard work, frustration giving way to something akin to satisfaction, and eventual victory. Tadashi looks closely, taking in every little detail, and comes to a stop at Kei’s face. A captain and his vice, Akiteru had called them, a touch too smug (and lots of tears).

After spending a lifetime with Tsukishima Kei, Tadashi can read him like an open book. Every inch of Kei’s life has been a curveball and Kei has always been ill-equipped to deal with it. But he does, and in his own way, he grows from mistakes, both his own and others’, like a vine steadily creeping along the length of an evergreen. Tadashi’s been at the front seat of every opening act of every profound moment in Kei’s life. He’s seen how Kei’s grown, both in size and emotional maturity, from little mosaic pieces of shiny blond hair and a diffusive attitude to the larger, steady hand that’s held out for Tadashi to take.

And his pride is immeasurable. Because what do you need save for pride?

Tadashi intertwines his fingers with Kei’s, and Kei shifts closer, and it’s then Tadashi notices that Kei is no longer paying attention to the album and he spends a moment trapped in the same firefly-golden gaze, the same flash in the pan of vulnerability and emotion from the victory pose picture, before kissing Kei’s forehead. He reaches over Kei’s pillow and turns off the lights. Tomorrow is another long day, full of packing and labelling and moving a whole lot of boxes around.

Kei shifts closer to him as he lays his head down, squeezing his hand gently. Tadashi falls asleep like that, between two hearts beating together, some fateful metronome keeping watch, falling into a picturesque dream in which he tells Kei repeatedly to not eat the biggest strawberry he’s ever dreamed.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u cici & emily for powering me thru this fic, u know i would die for u guys & thank u in cosmic amounts to liz thank u for ur most excellent input!
> 
> anyway u all know the drill i'm still here in the tower crumbling into the wind save me by donating to the 'mother gothel goes on vacation' fund by leaving validation!!


End file.
